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Comment by aduitsis | Hacker News Reader

The elephant in the room is that many networks need to have content filtering, and you are proposing nothing useful. DoH torpedoes content filtering to its very core and, fortunately, the knob Mozilla provides can (hopefully) be utilized. That's all there's to it.

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>The elephant in the room is that many networks need to have content filtering

First of all, we're talking about domain filtering, not content filtering.

And no, they want domain filtering, hardly anybody needs it, and there are better solutions than NXDOMAIN, such as actual content filters.

>and you are proposing nothing useful.

Why would I need to provide "something useful"? mozilla already described the many ways this can be disabled, from browser preferences, to automated checks for known disable-me domains, etc.

I need domain filtering: if the domain serves malware I want to block it, not just the known malware coming from it. If a domain serves porn, I want to block it on my kids computers (and mine) not just the content that is recognisable as porn. If a domain is used by malware I want to block it, and probably use the domain to determine the server, and block that too (too because the domain can move IP).

All of that can be implemented on the client (e.g. as a browser extension) without breaking the Internet. That's the only reliable way to do it anyway. MITM DNS filtering is easily bypassed and only effective against lazy malware.

> If a domain serves porn, I want to block it on my kids computers (and mine)

FWIW, my entire peergroup grew up without anyone installing content filters on their computers, and porn was already widely available back then.

This is quite a radical position, but there are no legitimate use cases for content filtering.

What use cases do people have in mind?

* State censorship. Totalitarian.

* "Parental controls". Child abuse. Learn how to build trust in your children instead.

* Corporate filtering. Find other ways to motivate your employees than blocking Facebook.

The problem with this implementation is that it doesn't go far enough. I want software to actively fight against the idea of content filtering.

How about wanting to filter advertising, or filter content for myself - I block imgur via DNS for example, or block domains used by trackers and malware creators?

uBlock Origin works well. But you have a good point — you should be able to impose content filtering on yourself. And Firefox supports that.

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